Cognitive Psychology
Chapter 1
Mind: The mind creates and controls menta functions such as perception, attention, memory,
emotions, language, deciding, thinking and reasoning. / the mind is a system that creates
representations of the world so that we can act within it to achieve our goals.
Cognition: the mental processes (such as perception, attention and memory).
Studying the mind
1868: Donders’ How long does it take to make a decision
Simple reaction time: participants push a button as rapidly as possible when they see a light go on
Presenting the light -> mental response: (perceiving the light) -> behavioural response: (pushing the
button).
Reaction time: the time between the presented stimulus and the behavioural response.
Choice reaction time: using two lights and asking participants to push the left button when they see
the left light go on and the right button when they see the right light go on.
Presenting the light -> mental response: (perceiving the light) (decide which button to push) ->
behavioural response: (press “left” button).
The difference between the two reaction times is how long it took to make a decision.
What we learn from the experiment: mental responses cannot be measured directly but have to be
measured via behavioural response.
1879: Wundt’s psychology laboratory: Structuralism and analytic introspection
Structuralism: Our overall experience is determined by combining basic elements of experience
which were called sensations.
Analytic introspection: participants are trained to describe their emotions, feelings and thought
processes in response to stimuli.
This technique was soon after abandoned (extremely variable results and difficult to verify).
However, Wundt is still seen as one of the first influencers of the empiricist approach: emphasizing
the role of experiments in gaining knowledge about the human mind.
1885: Ebbinghaus’ memory experiment: what is the time course of forgetting?
He measured how long it took him to recall a list with thirteen
random syllables correctly. Then he waited for a specific amount of
time (the delay) and then determined how long it took him to
relearn it the second time.
Savings: the original time to learn the list – the time to relearn the
list after the delay.
Savings measured the time saved from learning the list, basically
what he could still remember from the first time. -> smaller savings is more forgetting.
Savingscurve: savings measured over time -> memory drops rapidly over first two days, but then
levels off.
,1890: William James’ principles of psychology
You only pay attention to the things you have interest in. The other things do not properly enter
your experience. Paying attention to one thing involves withdrawing from another.
Behaviorism
1913: Watson founds behaviourism
Behaviorism: psychology as a purely objective, experimental branch of natural science. Behaviour,
not consciousness should be the studied objective.
Classical conditioning: Pavlov experiment that we all have learned a million times yay
1938: Skinner’s operant conditioning
Operant conditioning: how behaviour is strengthened by the presentation of positive reinforcers.
Behaviourists studied stimulus – response relations. However, this cannot explain that people often
respond to different aspects of the same stimulus event. So not S-R, but S-O-R and the study of the
mind made a come back.
Rebirth of the study of the mind
Tolman and his rats
1. Let rat explore the maze
2. Place cheese at place B and rat at A -> rat will learn to turn right at intersection
3. Place rat at C
In the view of behaviourists the rat should’ve turned right again, but it ran to the cheese
immediately. The rat had made a cognitive map: a conception within the rat’s mind of the maze’s
layout.
Skinner and his kids
Skinner said that children learned language through operant conditioning, because they just imitated
parents and then were rewarded. However, children also say phrases like “I hate you mom” and
non-grammatical sentences so that doesn’t make sense. There must be a mental process in place.
Cognitive revolution
Cognitive revolution: in the 1950’s with a shift from behaviourism towards the inner workings of the
mind.
Information-processing approach: viewing the mind as a computer. An approach that traces
sequences of mental operations involved in cognition.
Dichotic listening experiment: Return to idea of when we attend to one thing we do not hear other
things. Cherry: two messages in ears, only pay attention to one and you do not get the content of
the other.
Artificial intelligence: making a machine behave in ways that would be called intelligent if a human
were so behaving -> resurgence of mental processes.
Logic theorist: a program able to create proofs of mathematical theorems that involved principles of
logic. It used humanlike reasoning processes to solve problems.
Because of Millers theory we think that memory is not just a passive store of sensory information.
Memory processes must actively recode the information that is carried in complex stimuli into
smaller units. We can hold about 7 items simultaneously in our mind according to him.
,Modern research in cognitive psychology
Two different uses of models
Structural models: representations of a physical structure. They are simplified and show how the
structures are involved in specific functions. They do not tell you how these are involved.
Process models: the processes that are involved in cognitive mechanisms. Boxes usually being
processes and arrows connections between processes.
One can enhance learning through cognitive strategies. When one learns information distributed
over time (spacing) the learning process will be slow, but it will ensure a more durable retention.
Interleaving: intermixing different topics within a specific domain during the learning time will
improve performance.
Retrieval-based learning: retrieving information from memory is beneficial to learning.
Learning via physical note taking is better than learning via note taking on a laptop.
Chapter 2
Cognitive neuroscience: the study of the physiological basis of cognition
Level of analysis: the idea that a topic can be studied on different levels of analysis
Neurons: create and transmit information about what we experience and what we know
Nerve net: complex pathways between neurons for conducting signals uninterrupted through the
network. The network was then found to be not continuous but split up in individual units.
Neuron doctrine: the idea that individual cells transmit signals in the nervous system, and that these
cells are not continuous with other cells as proposed by the nerve net theory.
Cell body: the metabolic centre of the neuron: keeps the cell alive
Dendrites: receive signals from other neurons
Axons (nerve fibres): long processes that transmit signals to other neurons
Synapse: small gap between the end of a neuron’s axon and the dendrites or cell body of another
neuron
Neural circuits: neurons form specific connections with other neurons, this is not just random
Receptors: neurons that are specialized to pick up information from the environment (ear, eye, skin
etc.).
Resting potential: when the axon is at rest. The charge on the inside of the neuron is more negative
than the outside of the neuron.
Nerve impulse: a stimulant for the neuron’s receptor
Action potential: an impulse passes through and the charge inside the axon rises to be more positive
than the outside. An action potential remains in the same shape as it travels, which means no
information or energy gets lost. When the action potential reaches the end of a synapse a
neurotransmitter is released. A signal is transmitted from the end of an axon to the beginning of a
dendrite.
If you apply a lot of pressure to your skin, the action potential will not get higher, but it will fire
faster. Therefore it is representing the intensity of the stimulus.
Principle of neural representation: everything a person experiences is based not on direct contact
with stimuli but on representations in the persons nervous system.
, Feature detectors: neurons that respond to specific stimulations. When we look at a tree, many
different neurons will fire to represent different parts of that tree. The feature detectors are located
in the visual cortex of the brain (occipital lobe).
Researchers thought that neurons only responded to simple stimuli like oriented bars, but then
found out that some neurons would specifically fire for complex shapes like a hand.
The brain uses hierarchical processing: the neurons in the visual cortex respond to simple stimuli
like oriented bars, neurons in an area of the temporal lobe respond to geometrical shapes, and
another area of the temporal lobe respond to complex features like a hand. The action potential
must travel through all these places to create the full image.
Sensory coding
Sensory code: how neurons represent various characteristics of the environment.
Specificity coding: the idea that an object can be represented by the firing of a specialized neuron
that responds only to that object. -> unlikely to be a correct theory.
Population coding: the representation of a particular object by the pattern of firing or a large
number of neurons.
Sparse coding: when a particular object is represented by a pattern of firing of a small group of
neurons with the majority of neurons remaining silent.
Memories are also represented through the firing of neurons. However, these neurons are not
reacting to perceptions, but rather through stimuli originating from the brain itself.
Neuropsychology
Localization of function: specific functions are served by specific areas of the brain
Cerebral cortex: layer of tissue that covers the brain
Neuropsychology: the field of psychology that aims to understand how behaviour and cognition are
influenced by brain functioning and that is concerned with the diagnosis and treatment of people
with brain damage.
Broca’s area: specialized for speech
Wernicke’s area: specialized for language comprehension
Occipital lobe: visual cortex
Temporal lobe: auditory cortex
Parietal lobe: somatosensory cortex
Frontal lobe: receives signals from all the senses and is responsible for coordination of the senses as
well as higher cognitive functions like thinking and problem solving.
Prosopagnosia: inability to recognize faces -> damaged lower right side of the temporal lobe.
Double dissociation: the researcher needs to check multiple people with the same damage to see if
it really is that place of the brain that is causing the effect.
Brain imagining
Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI): create images of the structures within the brain
Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI): various types of cognition active in different areas
of the brain
Fusiform face area (FFA): a specific area in the brain for looking at faces.
Parahippocampal place area (PPA): responds to pictures representing indoor and outdoor scenes.
Extrastriate body area (EBA): responds to pictures of bodies or parts of bodies
